It’s the evening of the Fourth of July on Grayling Island, Maine, a short ferry ride from Boothbay Harbor. The car is deep in a desolate stretch of marshland, far from the parties and fireworks elsewhere on the island. The passenger has been working up the nerve to say that they’re lost. Just moments before, she and The Senator had been talking and laughing easily while she quietly tried to prevent his drink from spilling. Then, the road gives out, and the car sinks into black water, and the question returns: “Am going to die?—like this?” (6).

In a flashback to the party earlier that evening, Kelly Kelleher, the passenger, is preparing to leave with The Senator. Her close friend Buffy St. John seems wounded and asks why Kelly must go now. Kelly mumbles something vague, unable to admit the truth: The Senator is insisting, and refusing him would eliminate any chance at all.

The chapter revisits the car accident from multiple vantage points. The marshland they’re driving through carries a heavy smell of decay and standing water, and Kelly grips her seatbelt, struck by the strangeness of being somewhere without knowing where. They’re racing toward the 8:20 pm ferry when, at approximately 8:15, the car plunges into an unseen creek at a hairpin curve. Kelly—26 years old—thinks, “Not now. Not like this” (9). The car briefly skims the surface before sinking; the guardrail collapses uselessly, and the water smells of sewage. The day had been so festive that this reversal seems nearly impossible to absorb.

The Toyota strikes a guardrail so deteriorated that it collapses without slowing the car. The Senator shouts in surprise as dark water surges over the hood and cracked windshield.

Kelly’s full name is Elizabeth Anne Kelleher. She graduated summa cum laude from Brown University, where her honors thesis examined The Senator’s political career—something she resolved not to mention when they met that afternoon, though she eventually did. The night before, Kelly and her friends had laughed over a horoscope urging boldness in love. Kelly reflects on her tendency to hold back and resolves to embrace something new and reckless.

Kelly had suggested turning on the headlights before they left the paved road, and now The Senator drives through the marshland with aggressive impatience—pressing hard on the gas and then braking sharply—sloshing his drink onto her dress. His manner reminds her of how her father used to drive after wordless disagreements with her mother.

Kelly anticipates a room-service dinner at a motel, assuming they’ll avoid being seen together in public. She feels alert and excited rather than afraid, as though memorizing an adventure, and alternates between recognizing that they’re lost and treating it as thrilling. Just before the crash, she smells sewage and sees that her knuckles are white on the shoulder strap. She speaks up carefully and says that they appear to be lost. The Senator laughs it off; he says that it’s a shortcut and that one can’t be lost on an island. Hearing him say her name sends a girlish thrill through her. The car goes off the road immediately after.

The narrative returns to Buffy’s party. The Senator notices Kelly’s eyes and guesses that they’re green; he reaches for her sunglasses, and she lifts them herself to meet his gaze. Kelly privately notes that her eyes are more gray than green. She reflects that she was born with strabismus, a muscular imbalance causing her left eye to wander and her vision to split. Her parents disagreed over treatment—her mother preferring exercises, her father pushing for surgery—and the operation was eventually performed. Recovery was swift, and afterward, Kelly’s eyes were, by every outward measure, “normal,” something that reassured her parents.

The Senator was a leading Democratic presidential contender in 1988, but he withdrew and then declined to join the Michael Dukakis ticket as a vice-presidential candidate. Kelly daydreams about working on his future campaign.

When they met at Buffy’s party, the introduction was made by Buffy’s lover, Ray Annick, a lawyer who attended Andover with The Senator. After the accident, both Buffy and Ray will insist that Kelly and The Senator met for the first time that day. Kelly is employed by Carl Spader, a former Kennedy-era activist who runs the liberal magazine Citizens’ Inquiry.

Early in the drive, The Senator turned sharply onto Old Ferry Road—an abandoned route he didn’t know had been replaced. Shortly after, he accepted a second drink from Kelly.

The crash unfolds in slow motion. The speedometer climbs past 40 mph as the Toyota hits a rut and begins to skid. The Senator brakes hard, but the car’s lateral momentum increases. The guardrail disintegrates on impact, rushes whip the windows, and the windshield cracks. The car enters deep water and sinks on its side, the roof and passenger door buckling inward. Kelly can’t scream or summon a name to call the man beside her.

Ray introduced Kelly to The Senator early that afternoon, and she was skeptical at first—he seemed like a career politician performing for every handshake. The Senator was physically imposing: six feet four inches tall, around 215 pounds, carrying himself with the easy confidence of a former athlete. Over the next six hours, she completely reversed her view of him. Kelly felt genuine satisfaction at discovering that her judgment had been wrong, and she was flustered whenever he said her name.

Kelly has had several lovers since college but only one serious relationship, which was with a man identified only as G——, which she refuses to discuss. Her friends interpret this silence as evidence of a broken heart or worse.

Kelly’s political life is partly defined by going against her father, a longtime friend and donor of a Republican congressman who was publicly pro-choice but privately an advocate for abortion as a means of controlling marginalized populations. Kelly once screamed at her father for supporting him. Her mother quietly hinted that she may not vote the same way as her husband.

Kelly volunteered for Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign over her father’s loud objections. Dukakis’s landslide loss devastated her; she stopped eating, went sleepless for days, and eventually wandered Boston in a dissociated stupor before calling her mother to come find her.

Trapped in the sinking car, Kelly struggles against the restraints and buckled metal and finally manages to scream as water reaches her face. A fragmented flashback surfaces: In a final intimate moment, G—— quietly told her that he didn’t want to hurt her; she answered calmly, already knowing she had lost her power to affect him.

Back in the present, she’s disoriented, her right knee crushed but numb from shock. The Senator’s body lands on hers as he fights to get free. Memories accumulate: riding a bicycle freely on the beach as a child, The Senator’s eyes on her at the party, her years of disordered eating and recent recovery, and his claim to have been impressed by her article on capital punishment. She frames her decision to leave with him as an open acknowledgment of their mutual desire.

Kelly still tastes The Senator’s beery kiss as the car races along. She reflects, with some self-awareness, that the horoscope has worked, despite her disbelief in astrology. She knows that he has children around her age and heard him mention that he was separated from his wife of about 30 years. Earlier at the picnic table, drowsy in the afternoon sun, she had felt his tongue touch her bare shoulder; she looked up to find his eyes fixed on hers in a long, charged silence. She hasn’t been close to any man since ending things with G——, and despite sensing that they’re lost, she feels oddly immune to harm in the company of someone so powerful.

Kelly hears The Senator’s shout as the car hits the guardrail, and her head strikes the window as the Toyota plunges into the water and tips onto its side. In the darkness, he falls against her, and they both struggle in terror. He eventually frees himself from his safety belt and forces open the driver’s side door—now directly overhead—against the heavy pressure of incoming water.

Kelly grabs his arm, but he shoves her away. She seizes his leg and then his foot, which strikes her left temple; she cries out in pain. She holds on until his canvas shoe pulls off in her hand. He escapes, leaving her behind as she calls after him, begging him not to go. She’s alone as the black water rushes in.